Description

This prompt has it all. It’s like pizza, with character carbs, healthy vegetable plot toppings, and dairy-like detail, dripping with cheese.

I’m going to give you a general scenario. Your task is to depict it in the particular. For example, I say, “An employee has a big fight with his boss, causing a distraction at the rest of the workplace.”

You, putting it in scene and using the third person, write: “Rosalyn stormed up the stairs to the office of Halloran, the plant operator. The guy was two months out of community college, and his incompetence had nearly cost Rosalyn’s crew member her life. She was going to give him an earful.”

Your objectives are to do as I’ve done above: 1) make the type of workplace particular and depict it, 2) reveal the specific nature of what’s asked for in the prompt–in this case, the big fight.

Extra Task: Use this sentence construction at least once about your protagonist: “He/she was the kind of person who….” This will help you orient your character to type, and help make the conflict poignant to him/her in a way that’s understandable to readers.

Here are the general scenarios. Do each one. Spend 20 minutes on each, breaks in between.

+ An office worker is visited by a new cube-neighbor—a garrulous person.

+ A woman takes up a new fitness regimen, something she’s never done before.

+ A child becomes withdrawn and sullen, unlike he or she never has before.

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